


(you are) all that i see in my immediate future

by tofugumball



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff and Humor, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Has Feelings, Getting Together, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, geralt doesnt have emotions... or does he
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:48:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23857117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tofugumball/pseuds/tofugumball
Summary: A broken king once told him that he envied him, to live and never fall in love. Geralt smirks.If only that king could see him now.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 26
Kudos: 241





	(you are) all that i see in my immediate future

**Author's Note:**

> thank u so so much [emmie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/joonswig/pseuds/joonswig) for betaing!
> 
> title from "Heartbreaker" by Autoheart

At this point, Geralt isn’t entirely sure _why_ Jaskier is choosing to stick around and follow him into danger time after time. He accepted the bard’s original reason of seeking inspiration for his music, but it’s now been weeks and Jaskier has shown no intentions of splitting up and going his own way. Even though with the kind of luck they’ve been having recently, one week worth of adventures should provide him with enough interesting material to compose a dozen new songs.

Geralt tries to ignore it and let things be, but finds that he can’t keep his thoughts from wandering, trying to figure Jaskier out as though he’s a particularly enigmatic riddle.

So he brings it up one evening when they’re getting ready to spend the night in the woods. They must be near their destination – a lake occupied by an increasingly active vodnik – because the air around them carries traces of the smell of stagnant water, strong enough for Geralt to detect but not so much that Jaskier would notice and complain about it.

“How come you’re still here?” Geralt asks as he busies himself with building the fire.

“Where else could I possibly want to be while there’s a slimy vodnik on the prowl, other than right next to your sharp sword?” Jaskier replies cheerfully, seemingly oblivious, and continues braiding Roach’s mane.

Geralt already regrets asking. Jaskier is smart, a lot smarter than he usually cares to show. It’s hard not to interpret it as lack of trust on his part when he chooses to pretend otherwise.

“You know what I mean.”

For a moment, there’s just the quiet sound of crackling fire and rustling of trees as Jaskier finishes the last braid, places a flower in it and comes to sit on the fallen log beside Geralt.

“There’s something about you, Geralt of Rivia.” Jaskier says finally, looking away from the fire to fix his eyes on Geralt instead. There’s a small smile on his face, uncharacteristically serious, and Geralt doesn’t know what to say. He has no idea what any of this means; the fact that Jaskier’s still here with him, the undercurrent of fondness that sometimes colours his voice when he’s teasing Geralt. The way Geralt feels when he hears it. “I’m just waiting to see what it is.”

Geralt rises in the middle of the night, sharpens his silver sword and sets off towards the lake. Before he leaves, he takes out all the flowers from Roach’s mane. He intended to throw them into the fire to make a point – he doesn’t recall Jaskier asking him for permission to mess about with his horse in the first place – but some impulse makes him lay them down next to Jaskier’s sleeping, curled up figure instead.

He walks away and doesn’t let himself dwell on it. He’s got a vodnik to kill, after all.

Sun has already risen by the time he gets back. He’s drenched and covered in mud and there’s blood running down his arm from a deep gash above his left elbow. Jaskier looks up from his lute when he sees him coming, takes in the state of him and winces in sympathy.

“The hero returns!” he exclaims theatrically. “Thanks for the flowers, by the way. Very sweet gesture, especially coming from a scary warrior like you. You are officially forgiven.”

“Weren’t for you,” Geralt grunts as he dismounts Roach and starts taking off his armour. He’ll clean it later; right now he just wants to get dry and eat something. He pulls off his shirt, too, and hangs it on a tree branch to dry. “Forgiven for what?”

There’s no answer, and when he glances over his shoulder Jaskier’s eyes whip up from somewhere down his back. Geralt raises an eyebrow. Jaskier immediately drops his gaze back to the lute, ears reddening, and clears his throat. He recovers quickly, rambling while Geralt tends to the still kindling fire.

“Isn’t it obvious? You made me walk all day, _again_. Barely had the sun risen on the horizon when already I was beginning to struggle, my legs growing impossibly weak with exertion, the blood in my tired veins all but slowing to a halt, and basically what I’m saying is, please get over yourself and let me rest for one fucking day. Or would that kill you?”

It wouldn’t, of course. What keeps him from relenting and putting a stop to Jaskier’s frequent complaints is simply the fact that Geralt’s never let anyone ride Roach before. He thinks it might feel like a big deal if he lets Jaskier do it now. That it might feel important, in a way he wouldn’t really know how to deal with.

“I’ll let you ride my horse if you quit putting trash in her mane.”

Jaskier perks up. “Really?”

“No.”

Jaskier sighs. “Don’t know why I still hope,” he mutters. “By the way, don’t know if you’ve noticed but you’re sort of bleeding all over yourself.”

“I’ve noticed.” Geralt replies absently, focused on preparing breakfast for both of them; Jaskier usually doesn’t like to bother with cooking, claiming jokingly that Geralt’s much better at it thanks to his supernatural abilities. It makes no sense, obviously, but Geralt’s learning to pick his battles.

“Right.” Jaskier shakes his head as he stands up and walks over to his bag, abandoned in the grass. “I just want you to know,” he says, coming back with a wet rag in his hand, “that you are unbelievable.”

He sits down on the log, straddling it so that he’s facing Geralt’s left side. He takes one closer look at the gash and sucks the air in through his teeth. “Dude.”

“It’ll heal soon,” Geralt reminds him, poking at the potatoes he put in the embers of the fire that morning. “It’s already better than it was.”

“Uh huh, sure. I’m just glad your arm didn’t fall off,” Jaskier tells him as he grips Geralt just below the elbow and brings his arm towards himself. Geralt was right, the bleeding already stopped, but Jaskier seems determined to help anyway. He starts cleaning the wound, clearly trying to be gentle. It still hurts, though, so Geralt tries to focus on something else.

Jaskier is a solid weight beside him, his hands warm and steady on Geralt’s skin, and Geralt can’t help but lean into the touch. It strikes him suddenly how close they are; he can hear Jaskier’s breathing over the sounds of the forest, feel the warmth emanating from his body. He purposely doesn’t turn his head towards him, staring down at the ground instead.

He’s doing such a good job of blocking out Jaskier’s presence that it takes him a moment to notice that he’s finished cleaning the wound and is now tracing a line along Geralt’s arm, fingertips skimming lightly over the muscles. The wound is already closing itself; Geralt can barely feel it anymore. Somewhere along the way, without Geralt realising, the mood has softened to a dangerous, unexplored degree.

“There are so many questions I want to ask you, Geralt of Rivia,” Jaskier confesses, his voice going quiet. “I think the only thing stopping me is the very reasonable fear that you will punch me again.”

Geralt rolls his eyes, smiling despite himself. “You deserved it.”

“I really, really didn’t,” Jaskier argues, but he’s smiling, too; Geralt knows because he turned his head and looked before he could stop himself. They’re not doing anything anymore, just sitting and smiling at each other, Jaskier’s fingers still on Geralt’s shoulder, and he must realise there’s no reason for him to still be touching Geralt but he’s not moving away.

“You can ask me things.” Geralt tells him.

“Okay.” Jaskier sounds surprised. Hopeful. Then his smile softens, and there it is again, that fondness which Geralt’s never had directed at him before, has no idea what to do with. “Maybe I will.”

*

“Here’s a question for you,” Jaskier says a few hours later, as they’re making their way towards the edge of the forest. “On a scale from one to ten, how high would you say the risk of another vodnik living in that pond over there is?”

Geralt squints, looking at the pond in question. He considers its size and colour and the variety of plants growing around it.

“Not extremely high,” he judges after a moment.

“Splendid!” Jaskier beams. “I’m going to assume that means it’s non-existent.”

“Jaskier,” Geralt warns, but Jaskier’s already dropping his bag on the ground and pulling his clothes off. “Jaskier, I’m serious.”

“I don’t care,” Jaskier says happily, voice muffled by the shirt stuck around his head. “I haven’t gone for a swim in ages. You’ll save me if anything happens, right?”

“No,” Geralt says immediately. He watches as Jaskier finally wins the battle with his shirt and throws it aside. “I will not.”

“Oh well,” Jaskier shrugs. He hasn’t stopped smiling. Geralt wonders how something as small as a swim in a cold lake could make him this excited, this happy. Jaskier finishes taking off his trousers and looks up at Geralt. “You sure you don’t want to join?”

“If you’re not done in fifteen minutes, I’m leaving without you.”

Jaskier swims for much, much longer than that, judging from how the sun has changed position in the sky by the time he’s done. Geralt dismounts Roach to let her rest and leans against a tree, watching the scene with his arms crossed. Watching Jaskier. He’s playing with the water, diving and resurfacing, shaking his head forcefully and diving back in again. No monsters appear from within the depths to pull him under, and after a while, Geralt allows himself, gradually, to relax.

“This is what life is about, Geralt!” Jaskier shouts. He’s standing near the shore now, the water reaching up to his mid-thighs. His wet hair is plastered to his forehead; he pushes it back, grinning. He’s looking right at him.

Something inside Geralt is brewing, rising slowly, gathering strength. He can feel it spreading through his body, fizzling in his veins. He takes note of it, observes it carefully for a while. Tries to categorise it and comes up empty. He has no idea what this is; he’s never felt anything like it. It can’t be bad, though, not if it results in him smiling fondly at Jaskier, in Jaskier beaming happily in return.

*

“That’s not how it happened,” Geralt interrupts with a frown, turning slightly in the saddle to look at him. He hasn’t said a word for the past hour, letting Jaskier compose a new ballad about the vodnik from last week without protest, but this was too far. “I didn’t do any somersaults.”

Jaskier grins. “Ah, so you _are_ listening.”

Of course Geralt is listening. It’s been getting more and more difficult to tune Jaskier out lately, so eventually he just stopped bothering. He’s not really sure how it happened. He’s also not sure why it doesn’t alarm him as much as it should.

“Anyway, I don’t know how you can expect me to be truthful and accurate when you refuse to even tell me what happened.“

Geralt barely resists the temptation to roll his eyes. “I told you what happened. The vodnik attacked me, I killed it. I had to go in the lake and it was muddy as fuck. That’s why there was mud on me when I came back. What else is there to explain?”

“Geralt.” He doesn’t need to turn again to know that Jaskier is rolling his eyes as he says it; he’s gotten pretty good at recognising his expressions from the tone of voice alone. He spends a lot of time staring ahead while Jaskier trails behind Roach, complaining and singing and rambling. But he makes up for it in the evenings, when they’re sitting opposite each other, drinking mead, and in the mornings, when Jaskier’s slow to wake up and slow to tease, when Geralt’s almost – not quite – free to look.

“You know this is for _your_ benefit as well, right?” Jaskier continues. “I’m trying to make you famous here, so please give me something to work with. Some gory details, an element of suspense, something that could make this shit _interesting_.”

Geralt doesn’t know why he’s being this obstinate. He’s not a storyteller by any means, but it’s not like he wouldn’t be perfectly able to describe his killing of the vodnik in more detail. Maybe it’s because it’s been confusing, carrying around that _something_ in his chest and feeling it expand in random moments. When Jaskier winks at him in the middle of a song. When he bids Roach goodnight before going to sleep on the nights they’re camping out. When he demands they lie beside each other for warmth and shifts closer to Geralt in his sleep.

Maybe it would be less confusing if things went back to the way they were before. Geralt wasn’t eager to help Jaskier before, right?

“I can tell you one thing,” he says. “I didn’t do any fucking somersaults.”

*

Jaskier is everywhere. Geralt sees him constantly; he can always hear his voice, feel the scent of his clothes. Jaskier isn’t leaving and the thing in Geralt’s chest keeps growing, and there’s only so much obliviousness and denial he can hide behind before it becomes obvious even to him. Eventually, he’s forced to admit the truth to himself:

That for the first time since he can remember, he _wants_.

*

“Geralt, come on,” Jaskier complains. “We’ve talked about this. You’re the one with inhuman stamina, not me, yet _I’m_ the one who always has to walk. Why is that? Why can’t I be the one who gets to ride the horse and look poised and graceful?”

“Because you just called Roach _the horse_ ,” Geralt replies. “And that’s not her name.”

“I refuse to believe that’s the real reason,” Jaskier tells him, but gives up soon after that.

At least that’s what Geralt thinks, at first. Then, after a moment of silence, Jaskier takes the lute in both his hands and starts belting out the lyrics of the bawdy tale of a young widow and her three neighbours – the one that sets Geralt’s teeth on edge every time.

Later that evening, after a decently successful performance (the tale of the young widow was requested twice, to Jaskier’s great pleasure), he leaves Geralt to brood in the shadowy corner of the inn and sneaks into the stables. He finds Roach easily – he’s looked at her hindquarters enough in the past weeks to recognize her anywhere.

“Good evening, gorgeous. Brought you something.” He takes an apple out of his pocket, breaks it in half with his knuckles and feeds one of the pieces to her. “A peace offering.” She eats it and snorts into his hand. He chuckles as the warm air tickles his skin.

“Sorry for being disrespectful, I guess,” he tells her, stroking her chestnut neck. “Won’t happen again.” He pats her one last time, looking into her warm brown eyes. She stares back. It feels meaningful.

He turns to go and immediately gets a heart attack upon the sight of Geralt standing in the entrance with his arms crossed, watching him with an unreadable expression. Jaskier opens his mouth, trying to decide on what to say – should he apologize? deflect? jokingly accuse Geralt of spying on him? – but before he can say anything, Geralt nods once and then turns away, making his way back to the inn without checking to see if Jaskier follows.

The next day, when they’re ready to set out and Roach is saddled up, Geralt surprises Jaskier by taking the lute from him and swinging it carefully over his own shoulder.

“Don’t make me regret this,” he warns, patting Roach once and then stepping away, motioning for Jaskier to go ahead. Jaskier’s first reaction is incredulity mixed with suspicion, obviously, but those emotions quickly give way to ecstatic delight as he gets in the saddle and starts rambling about the hitherto undiscovered and therefore underappreciated soft side of all witchers, but Geralt especially.

“I’ll be on my best behaviour,” he promises, turning the full force of his smile on Geralt. It’s sort of hard to look away from him when he’s like this, Geralt realises before he carefully smiles back.

*

_Respect doesn’t make history_ , Jaskier once told him, but since then he’s proven himself wrong time after time.

“I don’t remember him.”

“You don’t–“ Jaskier splutters. “You _don’t_ remember him. Geralt, you backed him up against the wall and threatened to rip out his guts and stuff them down his throat.”

Geralt is tired, the bone-deep kind that creeps up on him sometimes and usually takes weeks to shake off. They’re staying the night in a small room at a shitty inn and Geralt can’t wait to go to bed and forget where he is. He stays silent and keeps scraping dry blood off his dagger.

“Then again,” Jaskier muses, “you do pull that trick very often. Now that I think about it, you pull it on nearly everyone you meet. I would imagine it gets hard to keep score after a while.”

This time, Geralt looks up from his dagger and fixes Jaskier with a glare. It doesn’t hold as much threat as usual. Really, given the mood he’s in, it’s more a plea for mercy than anything else. And Jaskier, somehow, must see that.

“That’s actually quite impressive, though, and quite useful, too. You know what, I want another pint, do you want another pint?” He’s out of the room in a flash. Relative quiet falls over the space, broken only by the distant shouting of drunk people from below, and Geralt closes his eyes in relief.

When Jaskier comes back, he places a full pint glass on the floor next to Geralt’s chair with a small smile. He falls into his bed shortly after that, and even though he starts snoring almost right away, Geralt finds he isn’t annoyed in the least.

That’s the first time it hits him. Under all the light-hearted teasing and the verbal push-and-pull, Jaskier respects Geralt. He respects his need for space and his past which made him into what he is now – hard to deal with, hard to talk to, hard to like.

He reserves the same inconspicuous respect for each audience he performs for, the ones gathered in castles and the ones crowded in cheap inns. Geralt thinks that might be what makes him so good at what he does. Geralt also thinks that if Jaskier wasn’t already doing such a good job of making history as one of the best bards of his time, Geralt would find another way to make it happen.

Somewhere along the way, Jaskier’s happiness started placing quite high on Geralt’s short list of priorities.

*

Jaskier kisses him in the flickering light of the dying campfire, its heat still lingering on his skin. The thing in Geralt’s chest either explodes or melts away – he doesn’t notice how, but suddenly it’s gone, replaced by a pleasant warmth buzzing through his veins. It feels a lot like happiness.

When Geralt opens his eyes, Jaskier’s face is inches away from his, framed by warm shadows, serious. Open. Geralt raises a hand to Jaskier’s hair and lays it on the back of his neck, a heavy weight which makes Jaskier relax and lean forward until his forehead is resting against Geralt’s chest.

Jaskier laughs in the half-darkness, right into the safe, warm space between them. Geralt thinks of relief. He closes his eyes. There’s a smile tugging at his face; he lets it break out in full.

“Sing something.”

*

Once he starts touching Jaskier, it doesn’t feel like he’ll ever be able to stop. Jaskier gives back as good as he gets, pushes right up into Geralt’s space, trying to get as close as possible and completely unashamed about it.

And it’s probably weird that it feels this right to have Jaskier on top of him, laughing and cursing. It probably shouldn’t feel this good to hear his laughter fade into sighs and feel his thighs start to tremble. Geralt reaches up and palms the side of his face and Jaskier just arches into it, looking down at him with bright eyes. So it can’t be too weird, Geralt decides. He thumbs Jaskier’s lower lip and drags him down for an open-mouthed kiss.

They’re quiet right afterwards, but not awkward. There’s not a hint of uncertainty in Jaskier as he stretches with his whole body, sated, back arching off the bed; not a trace of hesitation as he rolls over and bites Geralt’s shoulder before throwing an arm over his stomach and closing his eyes.

*

It’s even better from then on, this life of violence and joy and adventure they lead together. Because now when Jaskier demands they lie closer to each other, he doesn’t need an excuse. Now when he bids Roach goodnight under the stars, he also thanks her for carrying his weight on her back that whole day. Now when Jaskier winks at him in the middle of a concert, Geralt knows they’ll end up tangled together in stale sheets later.

Jaskier will be passed out half on top of him. He’ll have one arm thrown over Geralt’s chest and his left knee will be digging into Geralt’s thigh. Geralt will find he doesn’t really mind. He especially won’t mind the way Jaskier will breathe evenly into the vulnerable spot above Geralt’s collarbone, or the way he’ll mumble occasionally in his sleep, his lips brushing against soft skin. No; he’ll marvel at it.

Geralt never thought love would happen to him. He was sure it wasn’t even possible, not for someone like him – but maybe no one’s hopeless.

A broken king once told him that he envied him, to live and never fall in love. Geralt smirks.

If only that king could see him now.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading <3


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